Fakenickers have been around since the dawn of online gaming and today it's almost impossible to get on a public server without encountering a fakenicker. They are everywhere and in the last year or so, I've come to realize that there are many more fakenickers than there are "realnickers". I see this as a problem and if you keep reading you will find out why.

Why do we fakenick?

There are several reasons why one uses a fakenick but the obvious cause of this phenomenon is that our internet nickname has become so known that the nickname isn't concealing our identity anymore, which is the whole point of not using our real names. But why do we want to conceal our already faked names? I can think of a few types of fakenickers with different reasons to their fakenicking:

The trainee

This is commonly a guy/girl who is fairly decent at his game and when he wants to play public games (to practise for his league/cup games) he doesn't like to reveal his tricks to the competition. Or, to give his opponents the knowledge that he knows. Cause if they know that he knows, he becomes predictable. Makes sense? Well let's put it this way. If you know a nice trickjump on a map, which in a certain situation (in a clanwar) would get you a slight advantage, you automatically give away that element of surprise if you let your opponents know that you have the capability of doing that trick. It's all about making the opponent underestimate you.

The Envious

This type is the guy who is fairly skilled but not as skilled as he would like to be. So, to feel all-powerful, he goes on to a server with very weak competition and beat the crap out of them just to feel good about himself and/or humiliate his opponents. If this person would use his "realnick" on the server he might get a bad reputation for being unsportsmanlike. After all, there's no glory in beating up the handicapped.

The Lamer

This type is the most annoying type of fakenicker. He uses his fakenick to actively ruin the fun for other people on public servers by teamkilling, kickvoting, aimbotting, camping or flaming.

The Chameleon

This one really gets on my nerves. This is commonly a decent player who goes on a server and if he plays bad, he will quit from the server and leave his opponents believing that he was just some no-name noob. However, if this person has one of his better days/encounters weak competition he will reveal his realname at the end of the game. Just to show people that he was the mysterious guy owning everyone on the server.

The Posh

This one refuses to let his reputation get tainted when playing around on a server. Even the best want to have fun sometimes and that may result in them getting fragged/defeated more frequently than if they were playing seriously. After all, you don't want anyone to know that you are capable of making mistakes/losing do you?

The Celebrity

These players are the true elite, the pro gamers. They use their fakenicks so that they will not get "special treatment". By special treatment I mean that they probably don't want the competition to be afraid of their "names" thus affecting their performance. Also, I can imagine that it's very hard for these players to go on a server and not get spammed with either praise or flame from lesser players. I suppose they just want to play the game like everyone else. The sad thing with this is of course that the we lose great thing with online gaming and their communities. Fans of online gaming can be much closer to their stars, compared to let's say ice-hockey stars and their fans. Lastly, the celebrity has many similarities with the trainee of course.


I'm sure you readers can come up with more types of fakenickers but now that we've established some different types of fakenickers we can conclude that many of us who fakenick somehow want to protect our online reputation. With the internet you have the ability to hide from your real self and build up a virtual personality which only reflects parts of who you are. But are we really hiding from others? Is it more important to have one unknown guy think to himself "oh that is a jolly good player" than having both friends and foes who can share your pain and triumph over many years? After all, despite all your efforts to preserve your reputation, most parts of the community still haven't recognized you as a top notch player have they?

I'd say that many fakenickers hide from themselves. People have a hard time facing the fact that they are not as skilled as they'd like to be so they create this online entity and try to protect it from our own flawed selves. From a psychological standpoint is kind of fascinating but from a community standpoint it sucks donkeyballs. Back when I was playing UT99 I loved the feeling of coming home from school and sit down and play with people i recognized and who recognized me. I made many friends and I made some enemies but it was all good fun and ultimately it was the strong community that kept me coming back. Nowadays the word gaming community is much more diffuse. Who exactly are the members of my gaming community? UnknownPlayer1 - 58924? I honestly don't know. What I do know though is that I'd certainly enjoy the game more if less people used fakenicks.

To wrap up this rather lengthy column I'd like to say that I'm no saint when it comes to faknicking. I used to fakenick alot and I was even a member of a fakenicking clan. But that was a long time ago and I've changed my ways. Today I never fakenick and neither should you!